![Gladys Bentley
She appeared at Harry Hansberry’s “Clam House” on 133rd Street, one of New York City’s most notorious gay speakeasies in the 1920s, and headlined in the early thirties at Harlem’s Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens.
She dressed in men’s clothes [including a signature tuxedo and top hat], played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting outrageously with women in the audience.
Bentley was openly lesbian during her early career, but during the McCarthy Era, she started wearing dresses, married a man [who later denied that they ever married], and studied to be a minister, claiming to have been “cured” by taking female hormones.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyazurIfhv1r3er0ao1_400.jpg)
Gladys Bentley
She appeared at Harry Hansberry’s “Clam House” on 133rd Street, one of New York City’s most notorious gay speakeasies in the 1920s, and headlined in the early thirties at Harlem’s Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens.
She dressed in men’s clothes [including a signature tuxedo and top hat], played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting outrageously with women in the audience.
Bentley was openly lesbian during her early career, but during the McCarthy Era, she started wearing dresses, married a man [who later denied that they ever married], and studied to be a minister, claiming to have been “cured” by taking female hormones.
(via attaboy-tomboy)
